Category Archives: Vision

Posted on

3 Weaknesses of Dyslexics and How to Compensate for Them

Have you ever experienced frustrating moments while helping your dyslexic child with homework and wished there was a quick fix?

When my daughter was in kindergarten, her teacher would send home vocabulary and spelling words to learn. We would spend hours going through those cards until she appeared to know the words. To my horror, when she brought home the results of her end-of-week quizzes, most of those words were incorrectly spelled on her paper.

As the school year progressed, my exasperation mounted. KC would verbally spell the words correctly to me at home but write them inaccurately at school. Looking back, with the knowledge I have today, I should have asked her teacher to give her oral spelling tests.

Here are 3 weaknesses I identified in my daughter, and what I did about them.

  1. Reading – She confused words that were visually similar e.g. saw and was, most likely because she had difficulty telling left from right, and in the English language reading always goes from left to right.
    • First, we talked about the meaning of the words then used pictures to activate the visual word form area in her brain.
    • So, we looked at the picture of a saw and talk about it.
    • Since there is no picture for was, she would use modeling clay to spell the word, then create a clay sculpture to represent the definition. That way, she produced her own image, which I directed her to take a picture of with her mind’s eye.
  2. Spelling – She seemed to memorize words based on their shapes. KC was unable to hear individual alphabet sounds, then match them to the letters and combinations of letters in words.
    • I found or generated creative ways of spelling words that incorporated the meaning of the word. Jennifer’s video here helped me, as she demonstrated this visual conceptual method.
    • For multi-syllabic words, I told little stories, for example, I told her that separate has a rat in it. She never spelled it wrong after that.
    • When I discovered music listening therapy, I enrolled her, to wake up the auditory pathways in her brain.
  3. Time-keeping – KC seemed to frequently get stuck in the moment, generating one idea after another and a series of What-ifs? Needless to say, time ran away leaving her way behind in her chores or whatever activities she was supposed to engage in during a particular period of time.
    • After talking about the importance of timeliness, we sat down and agreed on a solution to her tendency.
    • We placed a check-off list for chores on the refrigerator with completion times included.
    • I taught her a 3-step strategy:
      • Write her desired goal on paper. (Meaning and intention were the objectives here, not spelling)
      • Generate an action plan
      • Make a schedule that included all the steps of her plan, and follow it.
    • She still creates and uses schedules, today.

Thinking back to the quick fix I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I’ll tell you this – quick fixes serve a purpose, but they don’t bring lasting solutions. Addressing the problem head-on and brainstorming with your child, will bring workable results.

What has been your most frustrating moments while helping your dyslexic child with homework?

Or, what stories have your friends told you about their children’s academic challenges in elementary school?

Posted on

5 Strengths of Dyslexics and How You Can Effectively Use Them

In my letter to my second-grade dyslexic daughter, I highlighted ways she excelled, in an effort to offset her teacher’s list of her weaknesses. She is not the only one with gifts that, if built on, can propel the dyslexic to success in life.  

Did you know that 35% of entrepreneurs, 25% of CEOs, and over 50% of NASA employees are dyslexic? This is not by accident.

Here is a shortlist of 5 advantages someone identified with dyslexia has over the person who is not. These strengths combine to make them extraordinary in their chosen field of work.

  1. Strategic Thinking
    • They think outside the box and can look past the details to the big picture.
    • They are innovative and original in their thinking.
    • They offer unorthodox, fresh ideas that result in solving problems.
  2. Analytic and Intuitive
    • They are able to understand the deep meanings of stories that are read or told to them.
    • They are able to read between the lines.
    • They are able to take apart complex ideas or concepts and simplify them, thus strengthening their problem-solving ability.
  3. Creativity
    • Their keen sense of curiosity and strong interest in life feed their very active imagination.
    • They use their imagination to create an extraordinary view of the world, which often results in them →
    • Birthing lucrative ideas.
  4. Exceptional Spatial Processing and Knowledge
    • Their outstanding picture-thinking ability allows them to move around and fit things perfectly into spaces.
    • They are able to process 3D objects in their mind, making them good in areas like graphic design, architecture, and photography.
    • They have excellent visual memory for details in print and the environment.
  5. Increased Level of Empathy
    • Their ability to perceive the feelings of others, coupled with a genuine desire to alleviate pain and suffering gives them a deep level of understanding of another person’s plight.
    • Perhaps this heightened degree of empathy is an outgrowth of their experience as one who thinks and learns differently.

Children with dyslexia tend to be consumed with what they cannot do and totally miss the areas in which they outshine their reading peers. If you have or know a parent with a dyslexic child, make it your duty to build their self-esteem by consistently emphasizing the areas where they excel. Show them that you believe in them.

In your association with dyslexic children and adults, what exceptional skills have you noticed?

Posted on

Dyslexic: The One in Five

When a baby is about two months old, visual coordination begins to take place and her eyes are able to follow an object or person as they move, but they do not work together very well. By the time she turns three months, however, your baby’s eyes synchronize well enough to focus and track objects.  

Around this same time, not only will your baby smile when you appear in her line of vision, but she will also begin to make cooing then gurgling and babbling noises that graduate to imitating the sounds she hears when you speak.

Although every child develops at his or her own pace, most children will be saying about 10 words by the time they are 18 months old.

How did this marvelous thing happen? By imitation.

Children are keen listeners. Like sponges, they suck up the sounds around them, and without structured teaching, by 24 months, most of them understand simple commands and questions, as well as speak good enough to be understood.

Listening and speaking are innate.

Reading and writing are not.

Although reading is “speak on paper”, to become good readers, children must figure out that the sounds in the words they say are represented by different letters and combinations of letters.

According to Nancy Young’s Ladder of Reading, only 5 percent of children learn to read seemingly effortlessly. The others require varying levels of a structured literacy approach.

At the extreme end of this continuum are the “one in five”…the children with dyslexia.

Did you know that the most common learning disability is displayed by dyslexic children?

Most people consider dyslexia to be a learning disability. However, from my experience with my daughter and other dyslexic children, I’d say it is not.

I like how Ben Foss, a prominent dyslexic entrepreneur, and activist, describes it. An identity. A genetic, brain-based characteristic that results in difficulties in some areas, like reading, writing, and spelling, and strengths in other areas, such as visual, spatial, or kinesthetic skills.

Have you ever considered that whenever you are in a crowd, there’s at least one dyslexic person present?

Do you know anyone who is dyslexic?

What are their unique strengths?

Posted on

Can Visual Sequencing Affect Learning?

 

Throughout my childhood and teenage years, my nickname was “bookworm.”

I devoured books. It seemed.

Every Friday, after her weekly shopping, my mom would go to the Christian bookstore and buy me a book. I read this, in addition to the ones I borrowed from the library.

Oh the dreams I had… the places I went… the people I met.

But I had one problem.

Posted on

Learning and Visual Figure-Ground Discrimination

Visual Figure Ground

If your child cannot distinguish a shape or a printed character from its background, she is having trouble with visual figure-ground discrimination.

Yesterday, we looked at visual discrimination. Today, we’re going to take a brief look at this slightly different visual processing skill.

How can you tell your child is having this kind of dilemma?